Whether you’re trekking to a new place or simply trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t share a language with you, Google Translate can help you connect to new information and people. Today, we’re launching 9 new languages that span Africa, Asia, and Oceania and have over 200 million native speakers, collectively.

Spotlight on our new African languages

In Africa, we’re adding Somali, Zulu, and the 3 major languages of Nigeria.

Somali (Af-Soomaali) spoken in Somalia and other countries around the Horn of Africa with 17 million native speakers

Zulu (isiZulu) spoken in South Africa and other south-western African countries with 10 million native speakers

Zulu on the Google Translate desktop web app

Igbo on the Google Translate Android app

There are lots of languages in Africa, and this is the largest expansion into African languages to date (Google Translate supports Swahili and Afrikaans already). The more language is used on the web, the higher chances for us to launch it one day

You can help to add your language to Google Translate. Although Google Translate is an automatic tool, a new language sometimes needs a little love from native speakers to get off the ground. You can help launch your language by volunteering to help us gather and translate texts in your language. Sign up with this form. We’re also constantly fine-tuning our translations. You can help with these efforts by clicking the translated text and editing it to be correct.As always, we realize that we’re just getting started and have a long way to go. But hopefully these new languages in Translate help you to connect with new friends and new cultures.Posted by Arne Mauser, Software Engineer